Recently, there has been designed and sold a small jet-propelled speedboat with external jet propulsion. The boat, which is small and useful among other things for water skiing, is sold under the name "BUCCANEER." This boat has a number of advantages presently, principally the jet drive, which prevents propeller damage as the propeller is in a completely enclosed chamber. This not only permits operating in very shallow water but also makes it possible to run straight over ski ramps and also onto grass where there is a suitable entrance ramp or smooth sandy beaches.
In spite of the advantages referred to above which have made it quite successful, the boat has a number of drawbacks. The front is squared off and has fiberglass which can crack under fairly light blows where there is an edge, increasing danger of cracking when docking or otherwise striking an obstacle. Also, the boat, which is quite short, has somewhat marginal stability; and the rear gas tank, which serves also as the lid for the engine compartment, is high enough so that with some short people the view of the skier is slightly obscured.
A much more serious problem is presented by the fact that in order to ventilate the engine compartments it is more or less open into the cockpit and water splashing into the cockpit can run back into the engine compartment, which sometimes creates a problem. Successful as the design has proved to be, it will be apparent that there are certain drawbacks, which in some cases have raised problems of Coast Guard certification of seaworthiness. It is with an improved jet-propelled boat that the present invention deals.
Other prior art is represented by several patents, the first and more important being the Jacobson Patent No. 3,623,447, Nov. 30, 1971. This patent shows a jetpropelled boat with a raised deck on either side of a cockpit which is completely open in the rear, though the cockpit floor is normally above the water line. The deck is not provided with rails on the inner portion of the two side decks, which are raised above the level of the cockpit. The Jacobson patent, however, does show a rounded front, which is one, but only one, of the features of the present invention. When proceeding in calm water in a straight line, water does not enter the cockpit at its open aft end, but if a sharp turn is made, waves from the wash can flow in and cover the cockpit floor. The same is true if the boat is proceeding in choppy water and slows down; in such a case following waves can also inundate the cockpit floor. Theoretically, the cockpit floor is supposed to be watertight, but this is an ideal which is often not fully achieved in practice; and when the cockpit floor is inundated to a substantial depth, hydrostatic pressure can cause water to flow through the floor and into the engine compartment. This raises the hazard of engine stall under extreme conditions.
During the prosecution of the parent application, the Examiner pointed out that boats with raised decks surrounding the cockpit on all sides were not, by themselves, unknown in power boats and for this purpose cited the Del Vecchio Pat. No. 3,718,111, Feb. 27, 1971, which, though dealing with a quite different type of boat, an outboard driven boat, did show raised decks surrounding all sides of the cockpit, in other words, illustrating a feature which, by itself, for other types of boats is not unknown.